


Solemnity

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M, [an edit to 'The Time of the Doctor'], a crack in time, a final farewell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2234097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are graceful opportunities in the universe, a tree of things that can happen; changes that take place when the time and space so calls for it. Here is one: the Doctor and the Master.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solemnity

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to get this out of my system. Comments are absolutely appreciated! (Also I invented a bit of lore - forgive me).

The Doctor knows well of how the universe works. How the multiple verse works; how time turned – he could sense the hour, feel the heartbeat of the sun ( _myths said he_ was _the sun, but he knew better_ ). The collapse and the beginning of the all things, when the spark went out, when only he and the TARDIS remained. The final essences of all that encompassed the remaining dignity and might of the Time Lords.

How he had seen things. A thousand years under your belt necessitates experience, but: from birth he was combed to be knowledgeable. To be something great.

It’s a shame he missed so many exams. And forgot to study. Really, what’s the point in reading a boring manual when experimenting with magnets and potatoes is so much more interesting? His partner used to curse at him, or rather, his eyes would portray _you idiot, Theta._ It’s funny how some things never change.

The cracks in time, he thought, had been quietly dealt with (his Eleventh incarnation tends to phrase things this way: _oh, it was just a little problem,_ when the Tenth may have lent a quip about _well, you’ve got to start afresh sometimes_ or his Ninth may have said, in that lilt, _I really don’t know what I’m doing, but apparently it’s working, so_ ).

And well, this silly version of himself seems to have all the best luck, and it quite turns out no, the cracks in time were all a bit bigger than he thought. He hears a ‘Gallifrey’ mentioned and completely ignores it, that’s _stupid_ , that’s _impossible,_ because he killed his race and he bore the weight of that on his shoulders. Sometimes he wore it with melancholy. Others, he was fear and triumph; stared down parasite gods and said _you watch me, I’ve killed once._

Although this mighty Time Lord manages to break Handles on his way to find the crack in the church tower. Yes, his luck sometimes is quite good.

When he encounters that crack, that tear in the fabric of time, the flesh wound that the Doctor could feel in his _bones_ , in his _hearts (_ an attack on time is an attack on his very self), he’s taken aback, and in that beautiful respect of his self, he was utterly enamoured with it. What _was_ causing these anomalies? This destruction?

He could only feel a shiver of excitement, and of a natural, guttural fear, flitter up his spine. That’s his first reaction, after his eyes flick to Clara beside him; his second is wondering why the Master has suddenly entered in _from_ the scar tissue. It’s a great burst of light, and suddenly he’s reminded of the last time he saw Rassilon.

The Doctor’s a bit stumped for a while.

“I thought they outlawed those capsules,” he remarks, hands clasped and a rather impressed expression on his face as the time protective device is closed off by the Master. Today indeed was a surprise, from seeing his old friends the Weeping Angels to his old, _old_ friend, here now.

“You’ve never really been one for playing by the rules, have you, Doctor?” the very familiar face smirked, and this incarnation of himself, he finds, rather likes the Master’s eyes just the same. They sparkle not just like the fauna of Gallifrey, they _are_ two little Gallifreys. Flecks of gold, whiskey – the kind he knows Harold Saxon would have liked – and he’s caught up in this nostalgia that is heaped into the Master’s eyes, but not enough to begin wondering the _how_ and the _why._

“So I’ll take a guess, shall I?” He slips back into a kind of anger, a kind of _why are you alive, why are you here, you’re dead like the_ rest. It’s quick and deadly and the Master portrays no ounce of upset on his face (no longer haggard, it seems, but tired, certainly).”You’ve done this, haven’t you? Is it the leaking energy? What is it?”

He fires out, questions, bullets, and in his childish anger – the Master _was_ a part of who he was, young, and it was only befitting that this happened – he ignores Clara standing beside him. He sighs angrily, rips his eyes away from the Master’s to turn to her.

“Doctor,” her small voice says, but it isn’t scared, it’s that perfect mix of confusion and _explain this, Doctor_. “That’s the Master, isn’t it?”

The Master seems to be altogether bored by this point, rolling his eyes in that peculiar fashion he (the Doctor suspects) attempted to emulate from his Tenth self. Or it’s the Doctor’s petty assumption the Master would try to copy him. Well.

“An old friend, I suppose you could say,” he replies, slowly, and takes his screwdriver out to see if he can survey the situation appropriately. He hears the Master laugh, a belt, a laugh that’s very much _his_ Sixth incarnation, as he scans the room, and eventually, the Master himself.

“Hmm, you know, I’d say you’re compensating,” the Master begins, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes, “but that would be mean of me, wouldn’t it, considering my laser screwdriver. But still, that contraption Doctor, it looks worse than what they gave us back in our school days.”

He scrunches up his face and (he realises with shock) playfully glares at the Master. “I rather like it, thank you.”

“And that bowtie?” He moves from the spot he was rooted from, and slides over to lean against the wall. “You’ve really lost it.” He laughs, it’s like wax and sandpaper. “How old are you, Doctor?”

He would stand up tall and be affronted, because only the Master would understand the context of his age and it’s really quite embarrassing to admit to a schoolfriend, but he answers truthfully, “A little over a thousand.” Then, he remembers to add, “Besides, bowties are cool.”

The Master reveals genuine shock, a secret between the two of them, one that says _how long have I been gone?_ He skirts over this, much in the same manner as the Doctor did, and says, “And I thought your Tenth self was a dork.”

The Doctor lowers his head, scans the Master once again – traces of artron particles, curiously no hangovers of the energy that poured out of him the last Christmas he shared with the Master, and on the Doctor’s tongue he can taste (without the help of his screwdriver) the familiar iron of Gallifrey radiating off the Master.

But it’s not just that. It’s the tether of him – a Time Lord in the room – the fact he’s been avoiding until that small realisation. Four hearts between them, a knowledge of greatness and vastness experience, _the Untempered Schism,_ the multiplicity and possibility of time and space and everywhere and everything and—

 _We could travel the stars, it would be my honour. Because you don’t need to own the universe, just_ see _it. That’s ownership enough._

The sombreness, that for a fleeting moment the Doctor _swore_ the Master would have hopped right into the TARDIS, taken his warm hand, doubled against fate and the cosmos that reckoned their enmity would forever continue. The very one Rassilon used against _both_ of them. Unfair choices where choice was not given. The Doctor scorns fate.

“And I see you still bring Earth girls around with you. They get younger every time,” the Master comments, picking up on an easy subject he has constantly teased the Doctor on. “How’s old Martha? Or Donna—oh, no, you mentioned you couldn’t talk to her. She fainted at the very _mention_ of you. Sounds a bit like the girls, back in the day, don’t you think?”

He can’t help his face pinching in pain at the mention of those two – at the sarcastic edge to the Master’s smirk. His clothes are ever so in his style – a smart suit, but it looks distinctly Gallifreyan in some of the design (the scalloped edges on the tie) – and suddenly the Doctor is homesick. Maybe more out of memory than out of genuine longing.

“I haven’t spoken to them.”

The unsaid words he knows, the Master knows: _Time Lords have their limits._

“Well, you inflicted it upon yourself. I’ve always thought you were masochistic.”

“The drums?”

Clara beside him mutters something like, _I’ll keep looking around_ , and he murmurs _don’t you dare leave_ but she’s insistent, that one.

The Master’s face is dark, venomous, and now the Doctor knows their facetious pleasantries are out of the way. There is a strange feeling, an instinct, that tells him this brand of fury is not directed at him. For one of the first times in aeons.

“Gone.”

“And Rassilon?”

“You’re wondering why I’m here,” the Master says, eyes averted, looking up to the ceiling. His throat bobbed. “The Time Lords had a few bright ideas. After I didn’t work…”

His mind works instantly, knows the Master is only dragging out his sentence for the fact of the Doctor’s fondness for some human vernacular. _Of course._ “The Time Lords?”

“Oh, Doctor, come off it. They were prepared to destroy all reality,” he says it offhandedly, like _I could’ve done that easily._ “Do you think they were altogether concerned with preserving the sanctity of time?”

The Doctor shakes his head, not out of confusion but attempting to understand what _was happening_. Suddenly he’s confronted with these words – _Gallifrey, Master_ – and he doesn’t think he’s good at dealing with his past, now, he’s better of running away. But he’d rather run than anything else, always.

“So, change of heart, now?” He drags his head up, purses his lips, lets his back push in on itself.

“You know better than I that I’ve never been fond of any of the Time Lord’s ideas.” The Master opposes the Doctor’s movement, relaxed yet oddly composed in that feline way this particular version of himself could be. His hair is still bleached, and that detracts from his attempt at appearing strangely regal – but nonetheless, the Doctor could acknowledge the look on his face, the charisma that he possesses.

For a moment, the Doctor smiles fondly—“I helped you blow up South Wing.”

“Oh! Don’t you think you can blame that on _me._ ” This is it. This diamond – the same quality as they had, young – the same quality as they once had, on Christmas, at the beckoning the Master almost gave into. His breath hitches as the Master continues, “You know just as well you nodded your head yes and came up with the same excuses.”

“You led me astray,” he says, a slight upturn to his nose. He does hope his joke is taken.

It is.

“Haven’t improved in humour, I see,” the Master says a beat later, observing the room. “I assume this isn’t your ape planet.”

“It’s not a—oh, there’s no point bothering with you. No, it’s – it’s not Earth.” The Doctor returns to business. What he _ought_ to be doing. “Tell me why you came through. Tell me where the crack leads.”

“The Sanctum. Outside the Matrix,” the Master begins, voice picking up in a voice that would normally be describing _Lake Abydos,_ or _Mount Solitude and Solstice._ He did enjoy making terrible things beautiful, though. “The physical twin of the Matrix, Doctor. They tapped through that. Into the fabric. And I came through, as well. It made sense.”

“But _why_?”

He asks for questions genuinely. Not out of a soft way of saying _elaborate_ to a human, no, an equal level – one he doesn’t like thinking about, and the Master knows this because that would be degrading to his _pets_ – he wants to understand. Understand was different to knowledge – that was his constant need of the Master, to forever evaluate his being and action. It was just like that when you grew up together, when you were the last of your race left. When he was the only one to match your heartbeat in sync: _one-two, three-four_. The calling of the drums; the calling of the Doctor, his soul saying _come home, Koschei._

“Once I made that _gorgeous_ exit in the light, I landed myself back on Gallifrey. You can bet Rassilon wanted me dead, but you know, bureaucracy. He was overruled on some other matters. I land myself with a title and I’m told to fight, because of that pretty loop you landed us all in.” The Master rolls his eyes, straightens his tie for extra measure. “By the way, ties looked better on you.”

“Yes, yes, go on!” The comment on his appearance can slide for now.

“Also given a few regenerations. Not sure why they like me so much, maybe it’s because I still sent them Omega’s Feast cards after graduation?”

“ _Master._ ”

He winks, half-grins. The Doctor chooses to ignore that one too. “So anyway – you know me, I’m curious about everything. It’s all boring in the Capitol. I accidentally find my way—”

“Not accidentally.”

“Shut up. So one day I _accidentally_ find my way into the archives of the Capitol. It’s all a big mistake, you see. The guard confused me for one of the replacements under Rassilon. All a terrible, terrible misunderstanding. So I wander through – read all these _funny_ documents, it’s terrible, Doctor. I can’t stop myself.” He sadly shakes his head. “I find out about _distribution of time_ and _call outs_ and _attempt to break through_ and all these stupid notes, and it’s so pathetic. I’d have done a much better job, but that’s always me. Anyway. I decide, well, I’m not very fond of the Capitol anymore. You know they cut down our tree?”

“Really?” The Doctor’s voice cuts high, and the Master laughs at his _pre-pubescent voice_ and he thinks he quite likes the Master without the drums.

“Long story short – because I can tell, by the way you keep rubbing your fingers together, you’ve got a short attention span this time around – I grab one of those Epsilon vessels, the little capsules we learnt were outlawed because of the incident of 9.2 Zeta B – oh, don’t look at me like that, I’m only saying it because I know you didn’t study it. You just know at some point they weren’t allowed. So of course I grab one. It’s in my nature, Doctor – drums or no drums.”

“Then you went through.”

“They weren’t very happy about it.”

“But how…” He stops. Thinks. Mind races through, and he finally feels content with _knowing_ the other 50% of his species in this side of time was present. He could understand this machination, this quick-speed analysis that wasn’t necessarily _frenzied,_ as human interpretation went. It was an instinct, a learned way of thinking that came in bursts. Theta was better at it than Koschei, but the latter mastered _processing_ these into tangible thoughts. So his name went.

“Amy,” he says, and the Master huffs out a breath, expecting another ballad of the Doctor’s adventures. He rather liked them sometimes. “She – her parents were swallowed by a crack – she, she brought me back into existence. After time almost fell apart.”

“You really never stop, do you.” He says it flatly, not a question, a statement of fact, of _you never really stop for me._

He has never fathomed that the Doctor would have stopped all of time to wait for the Master.

“The TARDIS exploded. I’m not sure how that happened.” The Doctor’s eyes flick up to meet the Master’s, and there’s a kind of cold fear on his face, _a TARDIS exploding_? He doesn’t need to explain it.

He can hear his chest _singing._

“Then well, I solved it. With the Pandorica.”

“And you thought I was stupid for using the Toclafane. Children’s stories, Doctor.”

“No—it’s real—but nevermind. I saved time.” He preens himself, then begins pacing under the gaze of the other Time Lord. (He feels another ghost up his spine). “And so, you see – I was on the wrong side of the cracks. It was very complicated. I left a few things for Amy to remember me, though, and River—”

“Who’s River?”

He doesn’t want to explain this to _him_ of all people.

“Long story – Amy and Rory’s daughter who was abducted and turned into an assassin to kill me… this all sounds very ridiculous, doesn’t it?” His movement stops as he meets the half-amused half-exasperated Master.

“Yes. It’s utterly stupid, and I can tell it’s all real because you were involved.”

“Good. All right. So. Amy remembers me and I pop back into existence. Plan worked!” he claims exuberantly, hands outstretched.

That’s when the enormity of this time hits him: he and the Master, a proper conversation, no threats of genocide.

“You’re normal,” he says softly. “Like—”

“Shut up,” the Master cuts off. “Don’t pretend everything I am is because of the drums. Don’t _pretend_ I’m a _monster_ to you, just because of what he did. I am what I am. I chose to leave Gallifrey, not the drums. I _ran away_ from the War, Doctor. That was not the drums. That was me.”

“I know.”

“Shut up. _Shut up_.”

“I already told you—”

“Yes, Doctor. Do go on.” His eyes burn. His hands are clenched, and for one moment the Doctor thinks _I’ve overstepped it_.

 _I forgive you,_ he adds inwardly.

He was his responsibility, after all.

“I never could figure out how Amy was connected. How it all came together.”

Realisation dawns on the Master’s face, and the Doctor is gently reminded of the twin suns rising in the morning on Gallifrey, breaking over the horizon.

“How would she be connected to the Matrix?”

“You said the cracks were in the Sanctum. She’s connected to it through the crack, she can alter a subspace of reality—the cracks strengthen this—there you have a girl that can wish a Doctor back into existence, back onto the right side.” He says all this with a parting of his hands, an invite that says _look at us._ “So, how did you end up right here when I was?”

The Master looks at his hands, tilts his head, and this movement, the Doctor recognises, was never representative of the drums. It was his way of behaving, his way of thinking that still revealed a threat, a possibility of _I don’t trust you_.

It’s a thread they’re hanging on. It’s never been different, and sometimes when the Doctor is bored and goes to see the birth of a star, he wonders if he could do things again. If he could change time – stop Rassilon, stop him deciding a path for his friend,his literal other half.

How time went on. How he sought after something in his human companions, a home, a _something_ , a some _one,_ and he knew all along who he needed and he didn’t know it until the Master came, until he thought the Master would bring his death. When he held him dying in his arms, when he fought with him the Sea Devils, when he ran in the fields and recalled it so many years later – his Koschei, the Master. The Master and the Doctor. His hearts throbbed with a timeless longing.

The fate that Rassilon had counted on was that the wherever the Doctor went, eventually (be it a hundred years, ten years, five minutes) the Master would follow. Perhaps there was a subconscious trail they both followed, always ending up beside the other, or perhaps they were simply intertwined by virtue of their very selves.

The Doctor likes to think he chooses his future. He thinks that if he has that free will, someday the Master will. (It’s paid off).

“That’s just how it goes, isn’t it?”

 _Yes, it is._ “So you came here because you were bored?”

“Why do you think I wanted to take over the universe? It got your attention, didn’t it?”

“That was the _drums_ ,” the Doctor admonishes, shakes his head with furrowed forehead. “For my attention? Really?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re quite young now.”

He muses at this, how his partners often said _he was so old_ and they could _see his eyes_. And the Master stood there, unironically, said he was _young._ He’s waiting for ‘dashing’. “I try to eat my vegetables, though I can be very bad about it. I hate apples. And beans.”

“Younger than I thought.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, wandering around the room again, eyes flicking over to the crack again. “And nobody tried to follow after you?”

“They assumed I committed suicide, passing through there without the gravitational force Gallifrey would pull through.”

“Is that what you intended?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” the Doctor quietly says, noticing the unchanged stance of the Master. He says it so offhandedly. He _has_ seen permanent death a fair few times now. He must be tired. He must be hiding his madness – the drums no longer driving him to frivolity, now just letting the weight of his life crashing in on himself, and the Doctor knows then it is not a thread holding them; it is a thread of the Doctor holding the Master.

“It got me here. Are you going to lock me up in the TARDIS?”

“Well—it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“I hate it when you phrase things like that. _Oh, the Cascade was just open a little._ My favourite! _The Daleks just came and caused a bit of trouble._ You’re atrocious, Doctor.”

“There’s kind of an armada of armies orbiting the planet,” he rushes out, watching the look of utter disapproval morph on the Master’s face. He shakes his head for extra measure, walks over to the Doctor and stops a step in front of him.

“Gallifrey wants out,” the Master begins slowly, not out clarity but saying _you’re an idiot, Doctor, and here’s how I’m showing you_. “And those up there want war if it does make it.”

“You’re enough coming through! I’m lucky they’ve not noticed anything. You aren’t a planet, so that excuses things. But still.”

“Why can’t you just, I don’t know, decide to murder a species or two? Well, other than your own race.” He watches with glee as the Doctor swallows (takes note of the fact _this_ Doctor doesn’t turn to a melancholic moron). “It would save you awful time another day you decide to save a poor, impoverished planet when the slavers come to wonder what’s happening.”

“You stop that now,” he says, with a point of his finger. “Handles is broken and I’m really quite unhappy about it, now that I remember—”

“Handles? _Handles?_ ” The Master barks out a laugh. “ _Handles_?”

“It was a Cyberman head that I turned into a very friendly Cyberman. He was helpful. He’d tell me what’s going on here.”

“Oh, I can do that,” the Master says with a sardonic edge to his voice. “They’re going on about your name. So they can come through. Did I mention that part? I stopped listening once you went on about Amy.”

“That’s very bad.”

The Master covers his face with his palm, mirroring the action of when the drums beat painfully.

“All right, very, _very_ bad.”

“Almost there.”

“ _Very, very_ , very bad.”

“Just about, yes.”

“All right then!” the Doctor says, voice bright and easy and he feels that air is light, clasping his hands together again, grinning down at the Master. “I’m still taller than you.”

“Say that to the armies above. _Look at me, I’m almost six foot and can probably take you down with a toolbox!_ Pitiful.”

“You had a laser screwdriver! That’s from a toolbox!”

“ _Laser,_ Doctor. As you’ve told me, and shown me once, Earth toolboxes typically do not have _laser_ in them.”

The Doctor concedes at first, but then grumbles half-heartedly, “Screwdriver, still.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the Master replies, consolingly patting the Doctor’s shoulder.

It’s a very small action, but it’s the first they’ve even touched ( _and in a cliché manner the Doctor would say it was a spark_ ) – it was a contact, like the beginning of an engine starting, the roar of the TARDIS, the clashing of asteroids. It was the sun upon combustion, the collapse of a star, a nebula, a supernova.

It’s a bit disconcerting and thrilling in the same breath.

“All alone, Doctor with no friends.”

“I have Clara.”

“She has one heart.” _And never knew of the silver trees, the way the light hit across the mountains – the grass you tore up and threw at me, the books I read to you when you grew tired, the pranks we played on the professor that gave me detention—_

It’s crystalline, it’s perfectly clear, it’s—there’s no telepathy or mind-play involved, it’s purely of the fact they are kindred, they are Time Lords and _they, they_ possess the grasp on one another in such an intimate way. The Doctor hates it, sometimes, when he _knows_ there is nobody but the Master that can do this – he loves it, too, loves it so dearly. He wants to tuck it away, somewhere safe. For once, he wants to stop running.

He’s not sure what that means anymore.

“How many am I allowed to blow up?”

“There’s no blowing up, thank you,” the Doctor ensures to add a scolding edge to his words, but he also knows the Master _could_ very well likely decide to blow up all the ships, joke or no.

“This is the part where I widen my eyes and serenade you with _Doctor, Doctor, what shall we do_? But let’s actually be clever for once. Your best bet—”

“—Is to send Clara home with the TARDIS and create a stalemate. Already ahead of you.” The Doctor proudly nods his head as the Master frowns.

“I much prefer when you let me make great speeches. Now you’re all about being right. Very boring, Doctor.”

\--

“Are we really going to stick around for here? Forever? I think I prefer the TARDIS. Where is the TARDIS?”

The Doctor sighs.

He is also at peace.

“Can’t believe you’re making me stay here with the apes. Did they just sew their seeds across all of time and space? Really. I don’t understand your fascination with them.”

“They remind me of the Time Lords.”

“That’s the first time you’ve said that, you know,” the Master halts his long strides around the sheltered room they have, nursed around the crack the Master first appeared through. “All I heard about was _humans are so amazing_ and _humans are imperfect and don’t you just find that wonderful, Master?_ The only good thing in that sentence is you saying my name.”

“Master,” he interjects, ignoring the grin on the Master (it’s delirious). “How—how are you not mad? Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

“Is that how low you expect of me? I’m hurt.”

 _No._ But he does know how Koschei works, how the Master works; for a minute there is a grasp, a chance, a pause of time that says _I’m here_ , and the next – the next the Earth is in flames.

He is so volatile, and it has been so long, that he does not know what to do. How they have changed.

“All right, Doctor,” he stops, turns to the chair the Doctor is seated in. “Don’t _pretend_ I’m ready to settle down and buy a house with you. Or anything disgustingly domestic like that. Don’t think that I have any _guilt_ for killing your precious humans. I did what I did.”

The Time Lord of a thousand and some years lowers his head.

That is how he justifies what he has done: what happened, happened. Some of it was necessary. But he wasn’t _like_ the Master in that sense.

“The drums were a call to war. A motivation. That’s why I was perfect for the _job_ , Doctor. Imagine you, with the drums. The Doctor. You would be a medic in the field; I am the _Master._ ” He drips the name like a curse, a command, _power._ He knows it means more in Gallifreyan, in Gallifreyan it was a synonym for a kind of absolute power over _oneself,_ a divinity over one’s own future and being. How ironic it turned out to be. “I was a soldier.”

He talks not of his war self.

“And I ran away. We are alike, are we not, Doctor?”

“When you put it that way, yes,” he says, hesitantly, uncertainly; he fiddles with the paper crane the Master had made some minutes ago in his lap.

“How far have you run?”

“A long way.”

“Good.” The Doctor is taken aback by this, and the Master smirks at his expression. “I still can’t get over that _look_. It’s like a confused giraffe.”

The Doctor sits up high in his chair, “I am not!”

“If you did not run, I would wonder who my adversary was anymore.” He watches the Master trod around the room, squint his eyes at the drawings of some of the children’s. “I must keep you in check.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.”

“Especially with the way you waste regenerations.”

“It wasn’t you,” he says quietly, running his fingers of his trousers, speaking softly now. “It was Wilf.” His head raises to look at the Master, and the sight reminds him of the gun, the crystal, the Time Lords, the white light – it’s tender, it’s _you Time Lord. You._

“Such a shame it wasn’t.”

“Well, _technically_ it was you,” the Doctor slips back into his rhetoric of the Master, “Considering it was your radiation that overloaded. Though if it weren’t for Wilf, I would have walked out of there.”

“I did like that incarnation. Young and jumpy, very emotional. I like you, though – you’re easy to poke fun at. You become so indignant.”

“I do not.”

The Master clears his throat, rolls his neck. They lapse into a silence, a silence that is filled with dust and the unstrung years between them. They do not need so much, now – there is no drive in the Master to kill so quickly, no drums – gone, now, with the connection severed. All they have is a planet the Doctor insists they protect, a stubbornness that is _ever_ so a predominant Doctor trait.

The Doctor knows very well the Master would rather be off somewhere else, but there _is_ nowhere else for him. Not with the vessel he took to escape through the crack now broken after the one-way trip, the TARDIS off with Clara somewhere.

And, for the Doctor, he is finally ready to stop running for once. He has found his peace, his objective; his pause, his place in time.

“I think your hair was better last time, though.” He pauses thoughtfully, sits on the arm of the chair and peers down at the Doctor. “Though this one – oh, you sneaky thing. It’s just like back at the Academy.”

He returns his attention to the paper crane.

\--

This was what the Doctor needed. A final goodbye, to the Master – a _proper_ goodbye. A solemnity, a final farewell to that aspect of his Gallifreyan upbringing, his two other hearts he owned.

Testing out their mental abilities on each other, unlocking secrets deep within their minds when only young by Time Lord standards; stealing a TARDIS; running across the universe and bumping into the Master; finding the Master again and again; finding him _again_ when he is his only other, his only other left.

“What would you have done if it was Romana? Or the Rani left?”

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Why?” His voice is a small, questioning one, the same kind— _will they stop?_

“I suppose I love you.”

“Well, that’s all right then.”

\--

The Master dies in the Dalek attack, the scourge at the end. It is fitting; so many decades with the Doctor, the life he never had, was fulfilled. The Doctor likes to think he repented in a small way, standing on the sideline and hovering behind the Doctor, much like when they were young. He fed off the Doctor’s presence, the Doctor shared his heartbeat, and they were an untouchable pair.

The Doctor regenerates.

Time flows, onwards.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm caught in the past with Doctor/Master shipping, and I just wanted one final goodbye. Here it was.


End file.
